Electrical Walk Through

I spent 2 hours with Wayne, Jamie K., the lighting person and the electrician walking through the house talking about lights and outlets. While Jamie was there, I also had her weigh in on the fireplace wall, Cory's wall, and the arches in the great room and the dining room.

We made some changes on Cory's wall to make the wall look better and not be one huge flat plane. The electrician had some great ideas and we took about a foot out of his room along the hallway wall and added a foot by making the bathroom and closet smaller. The hallway will have a big bookcase and art niche to break up the big plane.

We decided not to design the fireplace wall around our current tv. The dimensions weren't working and to get the tile and bookcases around the fireplace, we lost the space for the tv. Our current tv is 66" wide and 24" (or more) deep and would require venting in the back. It got too cumbersome to try to plan the wall around that tv and I didn't want to give up the look and the intent of making the fireplace the centerpiece of the room. It would also require us to make some changes to the bookcases that would need additional framing. The electrician also mentioned that buying a new tv would actually save us $$ on electric as well.

We decided to not put fans in the great room because with the dual furnaces, we have a lot of air movement and circulation and the fans would not be visible from the bottom floor. Cleaning and replacing light bulbs would also be problematic. Instead we'll be putting some can lights close to the edges and floor outlets for lamps.

The bonus room doesn't lend itself to fans very well either, but we think we need them, so we'll be using flush mount fans mounted closer to the dormers so that they don't impede traffic through the room. The tv we have now will need to go up there on the far wall. We'll be putting 8 cans plus the 2 lights in the fans.

The kitchen will have lots of cans, plus a chandelier in the kitchen nook and 4 pendants over the bar. Both Jamie K and the lighting consultant said we should put an odd number, so 3 or 5, but I really thought 3 wouldn't be enough and 5 would be too much. So they allowed me to designate 4.

Since the master bedroom has a huge vaulted ceiling, the can lights wouldn't work for the bedside lighting. We chose 2 wall sconces and off centered the bed to allow a seating area on the northwest wall. The big armoire will go in the nook and my big dresser will go along the same wall next to the door.

Other decisions made today:

• Nixed the fake chimney's
• Added 4 circuits and 8 outlets for the garage, no 220
• Added 2 ceiling fans on the back deck

A Lot Happens in a Week

Lots of activity out at the farm the last few weeks.

All the steel has been put in place.

All the floor joists for the main floor are in place.



All the flooring has been installed.



And we have a basement!


Yesterday and today they are chalking up the lines for the 2x6 and 2x4 walls on the main floor. We had to make some changes in the kitchen because it looks like the space for the refrigerator isn't deep enough. We could go with the wider/shallow refrigerator, but it is $4k more, so we decided to move the walls instead.

We are also talking about moving some walls in the master bath. Seems like our shower isn't quite big enough for two people, which we intended it to be. The framers are really good at seeing things and making adjustments as needed.

The utilities are also coming along. They have completed the gas line to the house. This week, the city electric utilities are working on boring the electric from the new church facility on the corner down to our property. They will trench across the driveway to the house in front tomorrow and will be coming down the east edge of the property tomorrow. Cable and phone are also being inserted into this trench so we'll have all the utilities ready except water. It is a different utility that brings us water, so not sure when that will happen, but looks like all of the utilities are coming as expected.

We drove around looking at stone samples and are getting our stucco samples today. We are narrowing down the color and will need to schedule another meeting with our decorating consultant in the next few weeks to finalize exterior colors.

We ordered windows yesterday and finalized those. Most of them will be casement and we have limited choices on the color. We chose the almond color rather than white or gray. They don't warranty the darker colors, I guess because they haven't figured out how to keep them from absorbing too much heat and causing problems.

We should start seeing walls go up this afternoon or tomorrow.